Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/750

730 any other normal function: the anti-naturalists declared war against free inquiry, assured us that the study of logic and natural science is highly dangerous, and that the seeker after truth must content himself with the light of ghostly revelations. We have since ascertained that the ghosts are grossly ignorant of all terrestrial concernments, and that their reports on the supramundane state of affairs are, to say the least, suspiciously conflicting.

In all but the vilest creatures the love of freedom is as powerful as the instinct of self-preservation: the anti-naturalists inculcated the dogma of implicit submission to secular and spiritual authorities. The experiment was tried on the grandest scale, and the result has demonstrated that blind faith leads to idiocy, and that absolute monarchs must be absolutely abolished.

The testimony of our noses justifies the opinion that fresh air is preferable to prison-smells; the anti-naturalists informed us that at various seasons of the year, and every night, the out-door atmosphere becomes mortiferous, and that sleepers and invalids ought to be confined in air-tight apartments. We believed, till we found that the most implicit believers got rotten with scrofula.

Animals seem to live and thrive on the principle that palatable food recommends itself to the stomach, and that repulsive things ought to be avoided. The anti-naturalists reversed the maxim, and assured us that sweetmeats, uncooked vegetables, cold water, drunk when it tastes best—i. e., on a warm day—raw fruit, etc., are the causes of countless diseases, and that the execrable taste of a drug is not the least argument against its salubriousness. During the middle ages parents used to dose their children with brimstone and calomel, "to purify their blood," and, for the same purpose, the most nauseous mineral springs of every country are still pumped and bottled for the benefit of invalids. There is not a poison known to chemistry or botany but has been, and is still, daily prescribed as a health-giving substance, and, in the form of pills, drops, or powders, foisted upon a host of help-seeking invalids. But, since the revival of free inquiry, we have compared the statements of ancient historians and modern travelers, and it appears that the healthiest nations on earth have preserved their health on the principle that guides our dumb fellow-creatures, and would guide our children if they were permitted to follow their inclinations. An overwhelming testimony of facts has proved that the diseases of the human race can be cured easier without poison-drugs—easier in the very degree that would suggest the suspicion that every ounce of poison ever swallowed for remedial purposes has increased the weight of human misery. And that same suspicion is forced upon us by